The Dark Ages
by GinHermi
Summary: Written for the fic exchange: Tate Langdon was missing something; he lacked something. Before he met his only light, there was a period of stagnation. Just what happened in Tate's mind before he met Violet?


**A/N: **Wrote this one for the exchange for lolablue. It's very short but I loved having to work with Tate's inner mind. All the other fics in the exchange were amazing so do read them if you haven't already. ^_^

* * *

**Chapter One: Life Before Death**

"_This is your life and it's ending one minute at a time._**"-**Fight Club

Tate Langdon didn't sleep. The cool April night had turned into day and he hadn't shut his eyes at all. Calling Larry out on the shit that he had done and telling Constance that he would _never_ be the perfect son she wanted didn't weigh heavily on him. In fact, he was goddamn sure it was the right thing to do. Of course, Tate knew that wasn't the only thing on his to-do list.

The walls hissed at him in low tones telling him to free people from the horrors of this world and to execute justice in the name of his brother. The desire for denial was barely, if at all, existent. He shook all over in anticipation and nervousness, but when morning came he knew how to get over it. The walls knew what to say to get him in perfect shape for the mission he had ahead of him. He acted on autopilot as he inserted drugs into his body like he had done many times before. That was the last thing he saw properly for a long time.

What he was aware of next were snippets of the following hours. He could smell the burning of Larry's flesh as he walked out of the office building. The stench made him smile internally. Larry had gotten what he deserved. Then he heard gunshots going off, saw blood coating the walls of Westfield High and perfectly remembered looking upon Chloe's frightened face before shooting her directly in the heart.

Later, when he found himself conscious and walking down the deserted halls of Westfield where not even the sliver of a soul was to be found, he was aware of what it was that he had done. He knew why everyone was hiding away in classrooms and closets hoping that he didn't appear in front of them. He knew what he did to those kids but he didn't care. It just didn't matter. He didn't feel anything at all. There was nothing left to do but go home.

He didn't know how he accomplished it without having a fucking squad car catch him in the process, but he walked all the way home without a problem. Maybe it was the aura of the house or finally coming down from his high but whatever it was, as soon as he got to the Murder House, he woodenly bypassed his mother's shrill voice, calmly sat upon his bed and stared at the door with a mind that was completely devoid of thought.

His guns lie next to him on the bed like a vivid reminder of what he had done… a reminder of the pain he didn't care he had caused. There was nothing going through his head and no feeling ran through his body but acceptance. He was simultaneously knowledgeable of his actions and uncaring of its consequences and its aftermath. It was just another shitty day in his miserable life. At least he had done what he set out to do; he had succeeded in one thing and that made the day slightly satisfying.

He heard the SWAT team burst in through the front door minutes later. Heard his mother's banshee voice worried about him and screaming at the police to not hurt him. He didn't care about her and, as far as her worrying was concerned, all he wanted was to tell her that after seventeen years of lack of parenting, one screeching session in a vain attempt to save his wretched life wasn't going to make up for the years of benign neglect that he had endured. The world would never understand why he did it and would never understand why he didn't care. Sometimes he scared himself by thinking that he didn't know why either, but he did. He knew beyond a shadow of a doubt what it was that he was doing…what the walls told him to do and he had no regrets.

Tate stood up as the team pointed their guns at him and, in what he thought was a small representation of the reasoning behind his actions, he performed the exact same gesture Travis Bickle had pulled on the police when they found him after he shot all those pimps. After all, like Travis, Tate truly believed he was saving the innocent. That was what the walls told him anyway, that by killing his peers they would go on to a better place, so he had done what they told him; he had believed what they had said. After he displayed his one moment of possible understanding and after he pulled out one of his guns from the bed, all the lights in his eyes went out.

* * *

**Chapter Two: Post-Mortem**

"_I'm a spirit of preternatural flesh. Detached. Unchangeable. Empty."_-Interview With the Vampire

Tate woke up in his bed the following evening. He got up, and walked to the kitchen to get something to drink like nothing had happened. In his mind nothing _had _happened. It was dark and, on his way out, he didn't notice the bloodstain on the floor or the fact that his bed had been wrapped in plastic. He just walked around the house as he normally would've and only noticed something was off when his mother gasped at the sight of him. He felt annoyed at her and said:

"What, Constance?"

The woman said nothing at all. Her eyes merely bugged out of her head and she placed her hand over her mouth in that pretentious lady-like manner that she liked to attribute to her Southern Belle origins. She had almost forgotten about the house's curse and she just felt so relieved to see him. He got his something to drink out of the fridge and rolled his eyes at the looks his mother was giving him.

When he reached his room again, he finally noticed the dark stain upon the wooden floor. It was then that he recalled that the cops had shot him. He couldn't, for the life-or afterlife as it would seem—of him remember what he had done to get himself shot, however. There was a black hole in his memories and the last thing he remembered before getting shot was the dinner of the night before.

He was honestly surprised that he was still in the house. He knew that Nora and Thaddeus haunted the halls of the house but he had never met any other ghost before. He just assumed that the Montgomery ghosts were haunting their old home because they were the original owners and had died there. There had been other people who died in the house after all but he sure as hell hadn't seen them walking around. He might have been a child when it happened but, as a teen, Tate had become aware that after his mother and relatives moved out of the house in early eighty-four, a young couple had been murdered in the house. He even knew that they had been found in a very compromising BDSM position. He sure as hell had never seen _their_ ghosts prancing around with whips and gags while they played bondage games.

So why was he here? There was only one reason he could think of that would leave a person behind after they had died and he wasn't sure how much he believed it. It was something he had overheard on one of his mother's kooky programs, so it was all probably bullshit. According to the crap his mother watched, ghosts stuck around because of unfinished business, and as far as Tate knew, he didn't have any unfinished business. He didn't leave a lover behind and he knew that Addie was strong enough (certainly stronger than he had been) to withstand their mother's abusive nature. Unfinished business had proved to be, like he had suspected, a crock.

It wasn't long until he wondered whether Beau was up in the attic waiting to play with someone. Sure enough, when Tate went up to the attic, he found his brother sitting on the edge of his old bed. Beau got excited as soon as he saw him and asked Tate to play with him. Tate smiled at him and acquiesced. What proceeded was a moment of brotherly solidarity.

As they played, Tate had an interesting thought. He didn't feel much but he could sense that he cared for his siblings. He also cared about Nora who had been like a mother to him from the moment she saved him from Thaddeus when he was only seven years old. That being said, he knew there was something missing. He cared about them yes, but he didn't really _feel _anything for them. Not a trickle of happiness or…love maybe. It just didn't exist within him. He knew it and, as with everything else, he was able to shrug it off…especially with some encouragement from the hissing walls that fed off of his negativity.

After playing with Beau for a while, he went back to his room. There was nothing left to do but leave the house but he had tried that only to find himself in the parlor again. Going back to his room, he sat upon the plastic wrapped bed and just stared at the ceiling.

In the morning, his mother burst into his room with fire in her eyes and a scowl etched on her face.

"This is all your fault!"

"What?"

"Lawrence and I are splitting up. He has to sell the house to pay for hospital bills…which means that Addie and I will be moving out."

"What? Larry caught you sucking on some guy's dick?" He asked sarcastically. "How is your break-up _my _fault?"

"This is all because of what you did!"

"I didn't do anything."

"You mean you don't remember setting him on fire?!"-She asked, her voice hard and unforgiving. She moved closer to him and began slapping him about.

Just because Tate had always _dreamed_ of setting Larry on fire didn't mean that he had actually done it. It was clear that his mother had finally succumbed to chemical retardation from all the alcohol she had essentially injected over and over again directly into her system. The cocksucker deserved it. Turning the idea over in his mind, Tate just lay there, letting his mother beat him without protestation. He'd been through this enough times to know that when she was done, she would leave him alone and he would be left to treat his wounds in peace. Then again, now that he was dead, maybe the wounds would heal themselves. He sure as hell didn't see or feel bullet wounds on his chest.

A few weeks later his bitch of a mother finally moved out. Like she had said in her screaming fit, Larry sold the house for his bills. It wasn't until he briefly saw Larry's half burnt and bandaged body that he remembered just that one detail. In his mind he could see Larry's flesh going up in flames and he recalled the odor of the burn. He tried to remember if anything else had happened that day, but it proved fruitless. There was nothing. After the image of Larry burning the only thing he remembered was the SWAT team entering his room and then waking up in his bedroom post-mortem. The rest was a vast nothingness that, strangely enough, mirrored his feelings.

Well, they _almost_ mirrored his feelings but there was one feeling left within his body…a feeling that his conscious and unconscious mind did not want to expunge. He was angry. If he had to choose, he would remain angry as opposed to being entirely numb. The small bit of rationality he had left told him that there was a feeling escaping him-a feeling that would surely enable him to slay the darkness-he didn't know what it was but he knew that whatever it was, he would never get it inside the house.

Years began to pass by and Tate could barely notice them.

Eventually, Tate came across other ghosts inside the house. Most of them were depressed fucks looking for something to do or waiting to be employed. The latter only referred to Moira, of course. He didn't recognize her from his childhood at all, but Moira didn't mind that Tate didn't remember her. Instead she appreciated the fact that he saw her not as a tempting vixen but as an old maid. She didn't care to be sexually attractive to a psychopathic dead teenager. Of course, Moira could never understand that Tate wouldn't feel that way for her even if he _had_seen her as her youthful self. When he said that he didn't feel anything he meant it. His dick had no sexual purpose at all…it was just something that hung between his legs that he didn't care for anymore.

* * *

**Chapter Three: Cleaning Them Out**

"_Some people are just born with tragedy in their blood."-Donnie Darko_

When V the anthropologist and her family had moved in, the conscious ghosts in the house were abuzz with curiosity. Moira felt beyond ecstatic to be helping someone again…particularly to serve someone with such high cleaning standards. It gave the haunted maid many a thing to do. She would clean the house again and again (though the he madam would clean it right after she was done but Moira was paid to be thorough) and, as always, inspired by her dark side, seduce the husband and show the wife that she was married to scum.

Tate, for his part, was indifferent towards V, her husband and her two children. Besides, three out of four of them were perfectly normal. The husband went to work, the kids went to school, and they came back to hear the matriarch yelling at them about their uncleanliness.

V, however, was completely demented and he related to that just a small bit. He was sure that the haunted walls of the house were talking to her just like they had once talked to him. The house preyed on the weaknesses of its inhabitants-especially the new ones- and only few were immune to its devilish charms. In V's case, she was being targeted because of her insane need for high standards, morals and cleanliness. The house got even more aggressive on its attack after V caught her husband eyeing up Moira appreciatively and when he gave the maid a light spank.

Oddly enough, Tate noticed all the things that were happening to V and could not recognize that he was still very much under the influence of the hisses that the accursed walls had consumed him with years prior to the arrival of the mysophobic, OCD suffering anthropologist. So as V was consumed by evil, grabbing a set of rubber gloves and almost every disinfectant known to man to repeatedly cleanse and poison her family, Tate just shrugged his shoulders and continued to hold his own darkness within him. Observing them an odd though that would unknowingly end up being helpful to him in the future entered his mind: _If you love someone you should never hurt them. Never. _

V's family joined the vast array of lost and decayed souls within the house but unlike so many of the ghosts, they remained hidden all the time. It was almost as though they had passed on but, of course, that wasn't the case. On rare occasions, Tate would see Moira talking to the shiny/bloody ghost of the dead husband.

After she had cleaned her family and home to her satisfaction, V had gone into the backyard and sat in a trance like state. The police found her there days later and arrested her after the neighbors had complained of a rotten smell coming from within the villainous house. The irony of it all did not escape Tate's mind.

* * *

**Chapter Four: Nora's Baby**

"_The hopeless emptiness. Now you've said it. Plenty of people are onto the emptiness, but it takes real guts to see the hopelessness."-Revolutionary Road_

From the moment of his death, Tate had barely spoken to Nora. The socialite scarcely appeared and when she did it was either when new owners moved in to complain about the furniture or wandering for hours crying for her baby. And when she saw him, she didn't recognize him. Tate didn't think it right that Nora's baby had been stolen from her and he wanted to help her. But he wanted to help her for reasons other than justice. Tate was so desperate to feel _something _that he was willing to do absolutely anything for Nora just to see if what he had felt for her when he was a child would resurface. Any feeling would make his perspective on this existence change completely.

Nora got especially riled up when a gay couple moved into the house. The fact that they were two men was something that she wasn't too fond of and neither was she thrilled about their choice in furniture or their modernization of her home.

The new homeowners were not much of a bother to any of the other souls within the Murder House. Moira finally had some congenial human company who didn't see her as a vixen and everyone else was just happy that the house was cleared of dust again and that this time around it wasn't by a manic woman. Strangely, there wasn't an army of evil forces trying to massacre the two young men.

No, Chad and Patrick's problems were all of their own making. The infidelity, suspicion and the tension were already existent. The Dark Aura might have elevated the tension but none of the ghosts seemed to want to hurt the new humans. Well…until it happened.

Nora had been pacified towards the new owners when Tate had told her that he had overheard that they wanted to have a child. Nora couldn't wrap her head around how that was possible but Tate told her not to worry about it. Adoption was sure to be the option these two were going to take. Hell, they might have even gotten a friend of theirs to have a baby for them. Surrogacy was all the rage, wasn't it?

The point of the matter was that with their desire to have a baby, he would finally have something to give Nora. He would be able to give her something that she _really_ wanted and maybe then she would love him like she had so long ago. Maybe by having her approval and appreciation he would finally feel that something that had been escaping him for most of his existence. Maybe what he was missing _was_ love or maybe he would just stop being angry or numb. Besides, Nora deserved something good to happen to her after she had given him kindness and slight mothering.

Then, it happened. An all out war emerged between Chad and Patrick that threatened everything Tate had been hoping for. There were pathetic attempts at rekindling the fire in the bedroom, there was repeated infidelity and there was yelling. It was clear there would never be a baby for Nora-not from them, anyway. Here Tate's only sentiment throbbed like the wound of an injured predator. He wanted to lash out at them, to teach them a lesson for being so insolent towards his desires. If they didn't want to have a baby together that was fine but they would have to face the consequences.

In his state of rage and of (mistaken) revenge, he donned the rubber suit that Chad had bought in desperation and decided to attack. While Chad decorated the house for their Halloween party, Tate appeared and carried out his dark purpose. Strangely, after he put on the suit things became hazy. Something outside of himself made him act; it was as if his body was only half in his control. This time around he _knew_ what he was doing, half of him wasn't in it: the numb part. The part of him that seemed to ache to become alive but never would. No, it was the angry side of his being-that unruly, uncontrollable side-that took over. When it was all over and Moira helped him finish them off properly, he looked upon the two dead men who lied bloody on the ground with their arms outstretched and hands seemingly itching to touch. As he looked at them, his desire to feel brought him to a logical thought. He spoke it to the old maid.

"It's kind of romantic, isn't it? Now they'll be together forever."

He would never know what it felt like to be a couple, but he assumed that it must be idyllic for two people who love each other to be in each other's presence for eternity. He scoffed at himself when he thought that maybe that was what he was missing. He would never know that feeling. He seriously doubted that there was someone out there as simultaneously numb and angry as he was.

Fate, however, had other plans.

* * *

**Epilogue: The Renaissance**

"_As the years passed, he fell into despair and lost all hope. For who could ever learn to love a beast?"_-Beauty and the Beast

It hadn't taken a long time for the house to sell this time around for some reason. It was little under a year when the Realtor was showing the dump to a family of three. At first, Tate didn't even care to see them. To him they were nothing more but the next victims of the atrocities that were bound to take place in this house. He never cared when anyone moved in before, so why would this be an exception? So he hid himself away in the basement, waiting for the Realtor to either sell the house or get the fuck out. It was then that it happened: in the middle of his meaningless and anger ridden existence, a light shone from the basement door and descended the steps to enter it.

There she was. She was dressed in such a fashion that he was sure he could pick her out in a line-up just because she was so delectably different and he could tell that she didn't give a fuck about fitting in. It was a brief moment in which he saw her and during it, he felt stirrings within his soul that he had never felt before. He _felt_something and that was enough to interest him.

It wasn't until after his final act of devotion to Nora had taken place that he had realized what the stirrings were. She was the light-she was his light-and from that realization forward he knew that he loved her and would love her more than the "waking world". Just to think that he developed the sentiment of love towards that delicate creature made him happy. Then to realize that his love was the most amazing girl in the planet made him come to one conclusion: his dark ages had ended. Violet Harmon had ushered Tate Langdon into a new era.


End file.
